Dracula eBook

“He can do all these things, yet he is not free.
Nay, he is even more prisoner than the slave of the
galley, than the madman in his cell. He cannot
go where he lists, he who is not of nature has yet
to obey some of nature’s laws, why we know not.
He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there
be some one of the household who bid him to come,
though afterwards he can come as he please. His
power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at
the coming of the day.

“Only at certain times can he have limited freedom.
If he be not at the place whither he is bound, he
can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise
or sunset. These things we are told, and in this
record of ours we have proof by inference. Thus,
whereas he can do as he will within his limit, when
he have his earth-home, his coffin-home, his hell-home,
the place unhallowed, as we saw when he went to the
grave of the suicide at Whitby, still at other time
he can only change when the time come. It is
said, too, that he can only pass running water at
the slack or the flood of the tide. Then there
are things which so afflict him that he has no power,
as the garlic that we know of, and as for things sacred,
as this symbol, my crucifix, that was amongst us even
now when we resolve, to them he is nothing, but in
their presence he take his place far off and silent
with respect. There are others, too, which I
shall tell you of, lest in our seeking we may need
them.

“The branch of wild rose on his coffin keep
him that he move not from it, a sacred bullet fired
into the coffin kill him so that he be true dead,
and as for the stake through him, we know already of
its peace, or the cut off head that giveth rest.
We have seen it with our eyes.

“Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was,
we can confine him to his coffin and destroy him,
if we obey what we know. But he is clever.
I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University,
to make his record, and from all the means that are,
he tell me of what he has been. He must, indeed,
have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against
the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier
of Turkeyland. If it be so, then was he no common
man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he
was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning,
as well as the bravest of the sons of the ’land
beyond the forest.’ That mighty brain and
that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and
are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas
were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though
now and again were scions who were held by their coevals
to have had dealings with the Evil One. They
learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the
mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims
the tenth scholar as his due. In the records
are such words as ‘stregoica’ witch, ‘ordog’
and ‘pokol’ Satan and hell, and in one
manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as ‘wampyr,’
which we all understand too well. There have
been from the loins of this very one great men and
good women, and their graves make sacred the earth
where alone this foulness can dwell. For it
is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing
is rooted deep in all good, in soil barren of holy
memories it cannot rest.”